The Monks Killed in the Desert

In the region of Palestine, near the village of Tekoa, which had the honor of producing the prophet Amos, there is a vast desert that stretches far and wide, as far as Arabia and the Dead Sea, into which the streams of the Jordan flow and are lost, and where the ashes of Sodom lie. In this region there lived for a long time monks of the most perfect life and holiness, who were suddenly destroyed by a raid of Saracen robbers. We knew that their bodies were taken up with the greatest veneration both by the bishops of the neighborhood and by the whole population of Arabia, and placed among the relics of the martyrs, so that crowds of people from two towns met and made terrible war on each other, and in their struggle actually came to blows over who should have the holy spoil. They strove among themselves with pious zeal over which of them had the better claim to bury them and keep their relics, one party boasting that they lived near the place where the monks had lived, the other that they were near the place of their birth. [a]

But we were upset by this. Troubled either on our own account or for the sake of some of the brothers who were not a little scandalized by it, we asked why men of such illustrious merits and such great virtues should be killed like this by robbers, and why the Lord allowed such a crime to be committed against his servants, giving up into the hands of wicked men those whom everyone admired. So in our grief we came to the holy Theodore, a man who excelled in practical good sense. He was living in Cellae, a place that lies between Nitria and Scete. It is five miles from the monasteries of Nitria, and cut off by eighty miles of desert from the wilderness of Scete, where we were living. We complained to him about the death of these men, and expressed our surprise at the great patience of God in allowing men of such worth to be killed in this way, so that those who ought to have been able by the weight of their holiness to deliver others from trials of this kind could not save themselves from the hands of wicked men. And we asked why God allowed so great a crime to be committed against his servants. Then the blessed Theodore replied.